"How the schez they doing this?" Jazz fired off her blaster at the mass of tentacles. "They're entombed!"
"They may have been entombed," Guzzi shot back, first with plasma pistol, then words, "but they're not dead. Not yet!" He fired the pistol again, this time at what looked like a head: molten Squdalien sprayed the air.
A tentacle snaked up behind Jazz, crawling unseen around her left boot, and yanked her backwards. She screamed, her laser pistol, now held above her head, discharging wildly in the direction she was being pulled.
Jazz! Guzzi's hand fell to his belt and grabbed the grenade, hurling it with a ferocity he hadn't felt in decades. It sailed gracefully over Jazz, and landed somewhere in the wriggling mass of Squdalien limbs.
Five.
"Down! Keep down!"
Four.
A shot. Another Squdalien head pops.
Three.
Two tentacles come at him, fast. Another shot, and one of the tentacles burns.
Two
He is swept off his feet, landing hard on his back, and he is careening towards a mass of thrashing noodles.
One.
Guzzi sweeps his arms around his face and
Wump!
Then he's free, up and running towards the prone Jazz, covered in unmoving oozing noodles.
"Ewww. Get up!" He fired into the squirming mass coming towards them. "Get up!"
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"Ewww! All right, all right! Like I want to be here!" Jazz scrambled to her feet and looked around. The evidence of Guzzi's magic grenade was all around her. And on her. Involuntarily she touched her hair. "Ewww! Schez!"
"Come on!"
The grenade was coalescing on Guzzi's belt even as he ran towards an opening which had been blasted through the wall.
"I hope that thing doesn't have a limited number of charges!" she yelled as she followed him through the gap.
Schmeep Gar loped past them and Sapphire seemed to float on the air beside Guzzi. "Here, turn here," she said.
The group found themselves in what seemed to be a control room of some sort. "The Squdalien, as you call it. It's what's left of the entombed. They saw their own de-evolution, and chose to entomb themselves in eternal stasis rather than regress to their earlier life-form.
"And here they created a machine to try to undo the changes." Sapphire looked around. The machines were lifeless, smashed and broken. "Looks like the Squdalien got here first."
Guzzi looked around, hoping for a way out. "How do you know this?"
"I can talk to them. The entombed's ancestors. They are here, with me. In me. Their consciouses must have fused with mine and the Garship's during the resurrection. My resurrection..."
Guzzi eyes showed his pain. "Are you still my sister?" The words almost caught in his throat. "Are you still my Sapphire?"
She smiled. "Silly Diamond. I'll always be Sapphire. I'll always be your sister."
Schmeep Gar's gravelly voice sounded for a few seconds before the translator spoke. "The Squdalien is coming. I can see little chance of us surviving this." The gravel sounded hollow, a rending hurt that struck a chord in all of them. "Friends," the Gar said, "have you got any of that tequila left?"
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Read the series:
The Guzzi series is an example of "Snapshot Fiction", a genre of serialised fiction designed for Steemit - check it out at: https://steemit.com/writing/@drwom/snapshot-fiction-a-genre-made-for-steemit
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